1:30pm Thursday 4th February 2010
By Oliver Phillips
THE Connexion is a monthly English-language newspaper focusing on France, to which we subscribe. Both of us gather the gist of French newspaper stories but it is the nuances that elude me.
However, I was somewhat interested to read back in September that a substantial exhibition was going to take place over a period of two months, dedicated to the life and career of Brigitte Bardot. It was being held in Boulogne-Billancourt.
To my mind, she epitomized the 1960’s and I can recall when selecting a picture of her to illustrate one of my articles some 15 years back, young journalists at The Watford Observer looking amazed.
So that is what she looked like they said enthusiastically, to which a female sub-editor approaching my age remarked” “Yes and what you see there, apart from a bottle of peroxide, is 100 per cent natural – no air-brushing, no botox, implants, digital imaging etc.”
Soon after that, Ellie turned to me one day and said¨”You will be on Fantasy Island this afternoon. Look,” she said pointing to the tv listings: “There is a programme on wolves with Brigitte Bardot.”
I am fascinated by wolves – they have had a very bad press for centuries. So, yes it was good to see them and Brigitte too, although she did not look quite the icon of yesteryear but, as I grudgingly admitted, my teenage idol looks are not quite the same either.
“There is still something about her, even now,” suggested my mate, the late Terry Challis, who had no interest in wolves but watched the programme for some reason, at which I could only guess.
As Terry pointed out, it must be reassuring to know that once you had everything: the looks, the education, the intellect, the face, the hair, the accent, the legs and body and still be slim.
Recently, I searched for Boulogne-Billancourt and, to my surprise found it is a suburb of Paris, twinned with Fulham. It would be on our way to or from England.
“I’d like to pop in there,” I said, “on the way to England or on the way back.”
Ellie nodded understandingly and I pencilled in the post-Christmas trip. However, we visited England in order to obtain flights to the USA in the autumn and were then delayed upon our return by reason of Terry’s funeral.
We decided to leave for Dover after the funeral and I checked out hotels in Calais and Boulogne on the internet. I found one reasonably priced only to note, just as I was about to book, that it was in fact at Boulogne-Billancourt. Was somebody trying to tell me something?
Well, we stayed the night in Calais and ambled down to Paris the next day. We have been through the city so many times, we know it very well, not least how to get on the motorway south to Limoges.
I happened to remark that despite it being an outstanding landmark, I had never seen the Eiffel Tower on such trips. Ellie duly looked out as we moved down through the city on the dual carriageway.
“There it is,” she called out. And she was right. Strange, I reflected, I had never noticed it before. It then began to occur that I had never seen this particular dual carriageway before.
We both agreed we could not have made the wrong turn but here we were speeding on to an unknown part of Paris. Perhaps we had been too busy looking for the Tower, we missed the turning. Finally we came to a signpost. To the left was Rouen and to the right . . . Boulogne-Billancourt.
Some things are just meant to be, I mused. It was a legitimate error.I have no need of such artifice but for as Ellie said: "Go for it".
I fed the meter and headed for the exhibition. It was excellent and I should imagine 70 per cent of the people walking through it were women. Perhaps they were musing as was I, how someone can look that good. Later, I rejoined Ellie as she walked three-legged Dixie round the fashionable streets.
“It’s not a lust thing,” I volunteered. “Before I got into the exhibition, there was a big hoarding with as good a photo of her for free as I could wish to see.”
Ellie replied that she had popped in there too and seen the hoarding and admired what she described as the “wonderful, natural, open face”.
They don’t make them quite like that any more.
Mind you, I keep looking.
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